


The Only Hope For Me Is You

by achy_breaky



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coping, Drinking, F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Other, Season/Series 02, Self-Harm, Suicidal Dean Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, plot diverges right at the end of season 2, so dont let this fic spoil the 15 year old trash fire okay?, using air hockey to save a life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28180293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achy_breaky/pseuds/achy_breaky
Summary: Dean Winchester has hit rock bottom and can only see one end to his story. Cameron is driving down the road late at night when they see a man on the side of the road. They pull over to see if the man is okay and that choice will change everything. They're just two damaged strangers trying everything to keep each other alive.If you're wondering whether or not to make that final choice, just wait one more hour.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Original Character(s), Dean Winchester/Original Female Character(s), Dean Winchester/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	1. I do it so it feels like hell.

**Author's Note:**

> i just wanna say that the mc, cameron, is going to have they/them pronouns and no stated gender. their gender isnt important to the story so i honestly dont imagine them with a gender at all, but you're free to project whatever identity you like onto them. no one in the fiction is going to correct you

Not this road, there’s too many cars. Not this one either, I don’t want to go over a cliff and never be found. Around this turn maybe, but there’s a bus stop there. I don’t want to interrupt anyone’s morning commute. In a mile or two there’s a good stretch with this huge oak tree off the side. That would be perfect. Beautiful, even. To dash into that field of green at lightning speed, almost like flying I bet. I’d be out of the way, too.

I flipped through the radio stations, looking for something I could tolerate. I settled on a classical station playing some concerto I hadn’t heard since grade school. Something about it made me start to cry, and I liked that. Tears streaming down my face, I checked for headlights. The oak tree was just barely in view, a great shadow in the night. I started pressing down on the accelerator, my chest feeling lighter with every foot I ate up under the wheels.

The oak tree was only a couple hundred feet off the road. So close. I prepared to turn off the road, when a movement was caught in my headlights. It was a man, slouched in an army jacket, wandering down the road. He was right in front of me.

I slammed on the brakes and swore, the panic rushing through me like nothing before. The man looked up just as the wheels screeched to a halt only a few feet from him. He barely seemed to notice, eyes glazed under the headlights. It was just him and me and the moon. My hands were shaking and I’d stopped crying, too stunned to even think of what I’d been doing.

Unable to think of anything else to do, I climbed out of the car on unstable feet and approached the man. Instantly I saw the bottle in his hand and could smell the booze on him. After I noticed that, the slight stumble in his step and the slow response time made more sense. I was suddenly angry with this man. Some drunk idiot on the side of the road just ruined _everything_.

“Hey, what are you doing out here?” I snapped.

“Fuck off,” he said, waving me off and continuing his sluggish march down the road.

I was incensed. What right did he have to get in my way? There was a nagging thought in my mind though: what was he doing out here? The nearest town was several miles in his opposite direction, and even more miles the way he was going. I got a sick feeling. I’d never met this man, but he was all too familiar.

“Wait, are you okay?” I called after him.

He didn’t answer, just waved a hand vaguely in my direction. I looked down the road behind me and then back to him. There was no one out here but us. I should just get back in my car and go home, or drive until I found another spot, more likely. But this guy was clearly in a bad way. If I didn’t help him, there would be no one for miles who could. And the nights out here only get colder.

“Mister!” I called, jogging down the road after him. When I caught up to him, he barely acknowledged me, just gave me a sideways glance and took another swig from his bottle. “Hennessey,” I noted as we walked. “A man of taste.”

“Yeah, and real high breeding,” he slurred, rolling his eyes. I would have appreciated the joke more if this guy weren’t giving me such a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Where are you headed?” I asked, clearing my throat. There was still a knot in it from the concerto earlier.

“Go away.”

“I can give you a ride.” I’m basically asking to be axe murdered. Then again, if this guy could chase me in a straight line with how sloshed he was, he probably deserved to kill me.

“I don’t need one.”

“Where are you staying, then?”

“Anyone ever tell you how fucking annoying you are?”

I flinched and tried to cover it with a weak laugh.

“Once or twice,” I said with a smile that probably looked more like I’d smelled something sour. “I’m just saying that I could give you a ride home. Or wherever you wanna go.”

The man stopped walking and patted his sides down with his free hand, then, not finding what he was looking for, sighed.

“I guess,” he said.

“Great!” I said, an inexplicable excitement coming over me. It almost managed to cut through my deep tiredness for a moment, and then it was gone. I turned back to the car and he turned with me. A part of me wanted to reach out a hand to steady his wobbly steps, but I didn’t want to push my luck.

I opened the passenger door for him and let him sit, then joined him on the drivers side. I was hyperaware of the empty energy drink cans and fast food wrappers that littered my car, the smell of old grease and cigarette smoke not even dented by my collection of air fresheners hanging on the rearview mirror. The stranger didn’t seem to care, though. He kept his eyes glued forward. Out of focus, but definitely concentrating on something.

“Where are we headed?” I asked, starting the car.

“North Star Motel. It’s by the uh… by the fuckin’…” he trailed off, brow furrowed.

“By the Denny’s?” I offered.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding angry that I’d had the answer.

There was a pause while we both absorbed the situation. It was weird, to be driving a random drunk guy home. A drunk guy who didn’t seem to _want_ to be driven home. Now that he was so close, I could see the deep dark circles under his eyes and the dirt under his nails. His face was dirty, too, with what looked like streaks where tears had been wiped away. He had these dangerously green eyes, though, accentuated by his bloodshot whites. I wondered if I’d ever looked that beautiful after a breakdown.

“Are you from around here, or--?”

“Just passing through,” he answered before I could finish my sentence.

“There aren’t a lot of reasons to pass through Spearfish. Are you scoping out Black Hills?”

“What?” He looked at me like I was speaking an alien language.

“Black Hills University,” I explained. “It’s basically the only thing in Spearfish besides the motel and the airport.”

“No,” he scoffed. He took another drink. I was starting to get jealous.

“So…where _are_ you from?”

“Nowhere.”

“Right,” I drawled and clicked my tongue on the T. This was seeming more and more like a mistake with every passing second. This guy might not murder me, but it was becoming more possible that I would murder him.

He grumbled something under his breath.

“Huh?” I said. He rolled his eyes.

“ _Kansas_ , I guess,” he repeated.

“Oh.” A stupid smirk took over my lips and I started to say, “Well, you’re not in Kansas any—”

“Hilarious. My sides are splitting,” he grumbled before I could finish. I wish I’d just driven to the oak tree and ignored this asshole.

We took the rest of the drive in silence. It was only ten or fifteen minutes, but the time felt much slower knowing what I was driving away from. I promised myself that as soon as I dropped Kansas off at the North Star I would turn around and go right back to the oak tree. This prick wouldn’t even remember this. That was almost comforting.

The light of the North Star came up at the end of the road like, well, the North star, and I let out a sigh of relief that this carpool from Hell was nearly over. Kansas had gotten very quiet, eyes fixed on the flickering neon sign, shiny pupils reflecting the light. That nervous feeling was coming back. I was getting sick of it. I just wanted to go to the oak tree and get some rest. I pulled into the parking lot and parked.

“Kansas,” I said cautiously. The only sounds were my voice and the hum of the engine. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Just tired.”

My blood ran cold. Kansas opened the door and got out of the car. I watched, frozen, as he shuffled, straight and sober, to his room and fumbled with the key. He disappeared behind the door and I waited, breath hitched, but no light came on. My stomach was roiling like the sea. I could only think of the oak tree and the light in Kansas’ eyes as we pulled up to the motel. I felt that same reflection in my eyes, too.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I said, bolting out of the car and slamming the door behind me. I was running, sprinting for the door, praying it wouldn’t be locked. I lunged for the knob and put all my weight into the door, only to have it open easily and send me stumbling into the dark room. There was a sniff in the darkness as I groped the wall for a light switch and frantically flipped it.

There, on the grubby little bed in the middle of the tiny motel room was Kansas, tears streaming down his cheeks, the barrel of a silver pistol resting on his temple. His mouth dropped at my figure in the doorway. My own mouth was dry as cotton. My mind had ceased all thought, there was only _DON’T_ , over and over.

So, I said, “ _Don’t_.”

He laughed darkly and cast his eyes up to the yellow lamp on the ceiling.

“Go back to your car,” he said.

“No,” I shot back without a beat. “Put that thing down.”

“Just go the fuck away.” By the stiffness in his jaw I could tell that he was trying to intimidate me—that he was used to being able to intimidate people—but his voice betrayed him. What was meant to be a threatening growl instead came out as a broken whimper, and he pressed his eyes closed at the sound of it.

“No.”

I didn’t know what to do. What could I possibly say to get him to change his mind?

“I’ll shoot you,” he said. My blood was so cold that my fingers went numb. He wouldn’t look at me.

“No, you won’t.”

“I’ll fucking shoot you if you don’t leave,” he cried, flashing the gun in my direction for a split second before returning it to his head, just where his skin met his hair.

“You won’t,” I said, more sure than before.

“You don’t know me. Just get the fuck out of here.” His face was contorted with pain, mouth drawn into a choking grimace while he shook with the force of the sobs inside him.

“You don’t wanna die,” I said. “You just feel like you wanna die.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

I don’t know.

“You’re hurting, I can see that. And that sucks. But there must have been a time when you were happy, right?” I was grasping at straws. I was trying to make out if the gun’s safety was off, but it was such a strange model that I couldn’t tell. “You can be happy like that again, but you have to live to see it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t fucking know me!” he wailed. I was raw with desperation. I refused to let this man take his life away. If I had to tackle him to the ground and tie him up, I would keep him alive.

“You’re not going to do anything with me here,” I guessed. “You’re not going to make me see that.”

“Fuck you, I will,” he grit his teeth as a tear slipped past his upper lip.

“If you didn’t mind me watching, you would already be dead. But you won’t let me see that, will you?”

Kansas turned his head to the floor. All I could see was the tousled hair at the crown of his head, the gun sticking out like an arrow on a prank headband. My throat was tight. My teeth chattered.

“I’m not asking for much,” I said, low on sage wisdom and even lower on hope. “Just one more hour.”

“What?”

“Just grit your teeth, put the gun down, and get some dinner with me for an hour.”

“Are you serious?” he scoffed through his tears.

“Just an hour. Then I’ll take you back here and drive away if you want.” It was stupid. There was no way this would work. Would I even be able to hold up to my end of the deal? Could I leave him here if he really wanted to die?

“An hour?” he repeated, voice small like a child.

“Just one more hour.” I tried for a kind smile. I think I looked more like a hostage. “We can get a burger. There’s exactly one good burger joint in this town and I’ll take you to it. My treat.”

He finally looked at me. Looked directly into my eyes. I was uncomfortable with the contact, but I held his gaze. He had to know that I was serious. That I was going to hold to my end and leave him be if he came with me. I tried to believe it, myself. He shuddered with a sob, breaking right in front of my eyes. I’d never seen someone so close to the end, cracks snaking down his sides as his integrity was pushed to the absolute limit.

“You have my word,” I said, finally. “One hour.”

Kansas seemed to deflate, like a balloon with the air let out. The hand that held the gun fell limp to his side and his spine slumped. With a click he enabled the safety and dropped the gun to the carpet, fingers too weak to even hold it anymore.


	2. I do it so it feels real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter isn't technically "new", sorry! I just split up the last chapter into different parts so there would be less pressure to write long chapters. sorry!

I felt a wave come over me. The gun sat still on the floor by the bed, glaring at me. Dean looked ready to pass out. I felt the same way. Exhaustion and relief and something that pulled on the muscles just behind my heart rolled over me and my legs went out. I collapsed into the armchair by the door, breathing heavy. I wanted to cry. The motel room seemed so much quieter now that the crisis was averted, I just wanted to close my eyes and fall asleep then and there.

“Shit,” I said shakily. “Goddamn it.”

“You said an hour,” said Kansas, pulling himself to his feet with extreme effort. He didn’t want to waste a minute.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to get it together. I took him in, dirty and broken and stained with tears. “You should wash your face first. Then we’ll go.”

He nodded, then bent down to pick up the gun.

“No!” I cried, leaping out of my chair. I stunned Kansas so bad that he froze midway down and backed up without touching the weapon. “That stays here,” I pant.

He narrowed his eyes. I swallowed hard.

“What are you going to do with it?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Blow your brains out all over my car?”

There was a moment where I was afraid that I’d given him an idea and that my efforts were wasted. Then, to my surprise, he cracked a grim smile and wiped the last of his tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Right,” he said. “It stays, then.”

He turned away from me and went into the bathroom. I went back to my chair and listened carefully for any telltale pill bottles or the click of a blade leaving its razor, but there was only the rush of water and the splashing as Kansas washed his face. The tap turned off and Kansas reemerged, his eyes puffy and looking on the verge of another crying fit, but his face clean. Clean enough that, when he came to meet me at the door, I could make out the faint splatter of freckles on his cheeks.

 _I never would have seen those_ , I thought dumbly, _If he’d died, I never would have seen those._

He trailed behind me like a ghost to the car. This time I let him open the door and get in on his own. He’d been pretty effectively sobered up and now walked with the heavy footfall of someone dead tired on their feet rather than too drunk to walk a straight line.

In the driver’s seat, my mind was running in place, panicked with no plan. Great, I had an hour. What was I supposed to do in an hour that would stop this guy from blowing himself away afterwards? As far as I was aware, my company was far more likely to drive someone _towards_ suicide rather than away from it. 

With my knuckles stiff on the wheel, I pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the road, driving deeper into town and farther from the oak tree. Honestly, the oak tree was as far from my mind as it had been in months with all the stress of the situation.

“When I was in high school,” I started talking. I gave Kansas enough of a pause to stop me, but he didn’t, so I kept going. “There was this guy named Will who would swallow stuff and then push it back up for ten dollars every day at lunch. Not like he puked it, but like he would swallow _whole foods_ and then push them back up still whole. Hot dogs and grapes and shit mostly. But anyway, I had the biggest crush on him, so one day I gave him ten dollars and asked him to swallow this hot dog that had a note rolled up in it telling him how I felt. Because everything he pushed back up he took a bite of, so he would find the note. It was stupid. So, he swallowed it, but then he started choking on it, and the gym teacher had to give him the Heimlich maneuver and he coughed the hotdog back up and it hit me in the fucking face.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kansas asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I just thought of it and I thought it might make you laugh.”

Kansas nodded but didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t stand the silence. Every quiet second felt like time slipping through my fingers, time that I could use to save this person.

“My name is Cameron, by the way. Cam,” I said.

“Dean,” he told me.

Even though I hated it, the last couple minutes of the ride to the burger place were quiet. When we arrived it was nearly eleven at night, but the bright lights of Morgan’s Diner were bright as ever. Bless their 24/7 service.

“You’re not gonna regret this,” I told Dean as we entered the diner and were hit by the smell of warm burgers and the low gurgle of the deep fryer. “These are seriously the best burgers and shakes in South Dakota. It’s an easy contest, since there are like four restaurants in this state, but still.” I chuckled weakly to myself. I needed these burgers to be good enough to save a life, because my humor clearly wasn’t going to do the job.

I was greeted by, as far as I knew, the _only_ waitress at Morgan’s, Trish. Trish was fifty years old and she’d had that perm for at least forty of those. She was a grumpy sort of person, and she definitely had her opinions, but I’d known her since I was a kid. For better or worse.

“Cam,” she drawled, her tone as flat as her blue eyeshadow. Her eyes slowly turned to Dean and she looked him over, chewing her gum with a distinctly judgmental pop. “And this is?”

“He’s from Kansas,” I said, as casual as I could. “He’s just passing through.”

“Uh-huh,” Trish said, eyebrow raised. Then to Dean she said, “Be careful. This one is bad news.”

“Christ, Trish! I just met him today, how bad of an influence could I be?” I squawked.

Trish raised her eyebrow even higher and jerked her head in the direction of the nearest window booth, then went to check on the only other customer in the diner—a trucker who seemed to be more denim than man holding down a table with a plate of ribs.

I trudged to the table and plopped down, more hopeless than ever.

“She seems like a treat,” said Dean, watching Trish stare down the trucker, eyes somehow as blank as a cow’s and as pointed as a cat’s. “She doesn’t like you?”

“How could that be possible?” I said, voice dripping with dark sarcasm. “I’m so lovable.”

Dean’s cheek twitched in what could have either been a smile or a nod of agreement. Given my track record tonight, odds were that he wasn’t amused. He picked up the menu and looked it over quickly, his gaze skipping off the paper without making contact. He sighed and tossed the menu aside, weariness taking over his features.

“I’m not hungry,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“Sure you are,” I said, trying to seem upbeat. It wasn’t coming naturally. “What do you like? I can order for you.”

“I told you, I’m not hungry.”

“But you do eat, right?”

Dean gave me a long look and I waited for an answer. Finally, he rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, I eat.”

“When you eat, what do you like?”

“Meat. Cheetos. Pie. Beer.”

“Great. Okay. I can work with that.”

When Trish came back to the table, I ordered a house special burger and a strawberry shake for myself, and a bacon burger with fries and a coke for Dean. After a sideways remark about watching my figure, Trish took the order to the window and immediately the sound of a burger sizzling on the grill reached our ears.

“Do you wanna talk?” I said after a long pause.

“No,” Dean said instantly.

“Is there anyone you want to call? I have quarters if you need to use the phone—”

“There’s no one, okay?” Dean snapped. “The one person I had is dead along with the rest of my family.”

“I’m sorry,” I said after a beat. “When did they die?”

“My mother when I was four,” he said, pressing his palms against his eyes. “My father last year. My little brother Sammy,” he rolled up his sleeve to check his watch. “About sixteen hours ago.”

“Oh,” was all I could think to say. In the kitchen, the cook flipped a burger and pressed down on the meat. “Don’t you think he would want you to go on living?”

“I don’t give a damn what he would want. He’s not here. I said I don’t want to talk.”

“Right. Sorry.”

The food came out quick and hot, with a frozen metal cup of strawberry shake to match. Before I did anything else, I stuck my straw in the shake and sucked down gulp-fulls until my brain started to sting. Then I sat with my eyes closed and swam in the pain of it, letting it distract me from this awful situation. I’m the worst person in the world to do this job. I can’t even convince anyone to stay friends with me for longer than a month, let alone convince someone not to kill themselves when they have nothing to live for.

When I opened my eyes, Dean was quietly nibbling at his burger, accidently pulling the strip of bacon out from between the buns and trying to gnaw it free. I took one of my fries and unenthusiastically dipped it in my shake. Somewhere between the oak tree and the motel room, I’d lost my appetite. Why was I trying to stop Dean anyway? He’d clearly made up his mind.

I swallowed a sigh and took another sip of the shake.

“What do you think?” I said, hoping my weariness wasn’t as obvious to him as it was to me.

“’S good,” he said around a mouthful of burger. That made me smile. I could imagine Dean in a dozen diners, eating burgers just like this with his cheeks full and a good song on the radio.

Speaking of, the current song on the radio was terrible. It was some kind of ballad that maybe I normally would have liked, but now the singer’s voice just grated on me and made me cringe with every high note. I dug around in my pocket for a wrinkled dollar and handed it out to Dean. He looked up at me curiously, ketchup on the corner of his mouth.

“Will you go change the music? The jukebox is over there,” I gestured to the old Bubbler machine that had probably sat in that very corner for seventy years.

“You don’t like Donna Summer?” he asked, taking the dollar and sliding out of the booth.

“Not tonight,” I grumbled.

He nodded and went to the jukebox. I watched him slowly shuffle through the diner’s selection of classic rock and 1930s jazz until the music paused and then started up again, this time as Tuesday’s Gone by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I pursed my lips. This was not better. At least Dean seemed more at ease as he came back to the table.

“Skynyrd fan?” I put forward, in order to avoid either complimenting or insulting the song.

“Yeah,” he said, digging right back into his burger. “Anything from the 70s or 80s with an electric guitar.”

I smirked.

“Including… _Kansas?_ ” I said, holding back a giggle.

“Yes,” Dean rolled his eyes, but I thought I caught a glimmer of a smile behind his cup of coke. “Including Kansas, smartass.”

“Did you ever see them in concert?”

“No. Never been to a concert.”

“What?” I squawked. Dean flinched at the sound and I flinched at his reaction. Lowering my voice, I added, “How old are you? How have you never been to a concert?”

“I’m twenty-six,” he said defensively. “We moved around a lot; I didn’t exactly have time to scope out tickets.”

“You’ve got to see one. It’s seriously nothing like listening to a recording.”

“Is there one playing in the next fifteen minutes?” he asked with a raised brow. I wracked my brain and then shook my head. “Then I guess I’ll never know.”

I dropped my head back to my shake. I’d almost forgotten that I was possibly sharing someone’s final moments on Earth, that I’d just served someone their last meal. This stupid rue green-eyed boy was going to go back to hotel room in a foreign town and blow himself away, and all I’d done was give him a full stomach to do it on. Twenty-six was far too young to die.

That last thought made me laugh, one of those laughs that’s just blowing air out of your nose.

“What?” asked Dean.

“Nothing,” I told him. “I just thought of something funny.”

He gave me a weird look but didn’t pry any further. I almost wished he had.

The hour was almost up. Dean had made it halfway through his burger before stopping, picking off the bacon and leaving the rest sitting sadly on the plate. I’d finished my shake and a couple fries without even touching my sandwich. What a pair we were.

“Are you any good at air hockey?” I asked him without thinking twice.

“I guess. Why?”

“I’m _very good_ at air hockey, and I challenge you to a game for another hour.”

I don’t know where it came from. I wanted this night to be over just as much as Dean did, so why was I pushing this so hard? Dean put his head in his hands and groaned.

“Will you just give it up and drive me back?” he said.

“Sure I will, if you think you’d lose.”

He looked up and narrowed his eyes at me.

“I’m not going to fall for that.”

“Fall for what? If you think you’re gonna win, you have nothing to lose. It’ll only take twenty minutes.”

“And if I win, you’ll take me back to the motel?”

“Absolutely,” I said, again wondering if I could hold to that promise.

“Fine,” he mumbled, climbing out of his seat. I followed him, leaving a twenty on the table behind us—more than enough for the food and for a tip.

“Thanks, Trish! You’re a dear!” I called to the counter where Trish was cleaning her nails.

“Don’t screw up!” she called back. _You’re a little late_ , I thought.

The arcade was only a couple miles away, one of the first things in Spearfish proper. It occurred to me as we rolled up to the front of the building that it was nearly midnight and they might be closed. I’d never tried to come here this late. If they were closed, would I have to take Dean back? Would he wait until morning for them to open? Not a chance. If they were closed, I was all out of ideas.

With a sigh of relief, I spotted the neon “OPEN” sign in the window and read on the door that they would be open until 2am on Fridays. It was my first lucky break all night.

The arcade was small, like everything in Spearfish, and had only two windows in the very front, so the rest of the room was lit under blacklight. Which was a bold choice, given the variety of stains on the psychedelic carpet and arcade cabinets.

The only other people in the arcade that night was the owner, Mr. Rafferty, and a group of teenagers out past curfew trying to beat each other’s Pac Man scores.

“Hey, Mr. Rafferty,” I said. He was an older man whose kids all went to Black Hills. He’d always been nice to me, but just like everyone else in this town, I could tell he thought I was a lost cause.

“Good evening, Cameron,” he said with a nod. “I see you brought me a new customer. Good kid.”

I beamed at the compliment and introduced Dean.

“This is Dean. He’s from Kansas. Can we get some tokens for air hockey please?”

Mr. Rafferty nodded and started counting out tokens in accordance with the five dollar bill I laid on the counter.

“You could always try some of our other machines, you know,” he told me. “We’ve got Street Fighter, Terminator, pin-ball. I just got the old Galaga machine back from getting repairs.”

“No thanks. I like air hockey.”

“Alright,” he said with a sideways look.

He handed me the tokens and I led Dean to the back of the arcade where the air hockey table stood, right by the vending machines. I fed the coins into the slot with practiced ease and watched as the familiar green lights came on and cool air started moving around the table. I took the puck and placed it in the center of the table, paddle in hand, poised at the ready. Dean did the same.

“The first to six points wins. Your puck,” I said, and he lunged for it, slamming the puck toward my slot. I blocked it and batted it back towards him, hitting the side of the table and sending the puck through a gap in his defense and into the slot.

Dean’s expression hardened. He didn’t think he’d have to try that hard to beat me. He repositioned himself in a more serious stance, focusing. I mirrored him. This was no time to let my guard down. We were fighting for his life, after all.

This time we tossed the puck back and forth for almost a minute before Dean scored. I didn’t know about Dean, but I was breaking out in a clammy sweat. I took a deep breath to steady myself and sent the puck out again, trying to aim for the side like I had before. But Dean was onto me. He saw the move coming and blocked it, sending the puck darting side to side faster than I could follow it. It slipped into the slot before I even knew what had happened.

The next match went to Dean, and then Dean again. I was starting to breathe heavy. He only needed two more points to win, and then I would have no choice but to take him back to the motel.

“Give me a sec,” I said, leaving my paddle on the table with the puck still under my slot.

I ordered a can of Mountain Dew from the vending machine and then asked Dean, “Do you want anything?”

“You’re just stalling,” he said with a smirk. Whatever the situation, he clearly liked winning.

“So that’s a no?” I panted.

“Gimme a sip of yours.”

I shrugged and cracked open the can. I let Dean take the first sip, just two quick gulps, then I sat down on the side of the hockey table and gathered myself. I slowed my breathing; I sipped my drink. I’d been coming to this arcade at least once a month since I was a kid, and almost once a week for the last year, and I always played air hockey with whoever I could find. I could do this. Without even knowing it, I’d been _training_ to do this.

I tossed the crushed can in the garbage and took one last deep breath. It was just me and the puck. There was no Dean, there was no threat of death. Only the puck, the paddle, and the slot.

The next round was long, but I won. The round after that, Dean won. I needed to win three rounds in a row or he would be dead. My vision narrowed to just the table. The sounds of the teens cheering each other on and the steady beeps of their game, the air from the vent to my left, Dean tapping his fingers on the table, they all faded away. There was only this.

The next game took a minute, but I won. The one after that was over in seconds. We were tied, finally. Dean had lost his confident smirk and was getting desperate. To win or to go back to the motel, I wasn’t sure.

It was Dean’s serve, and he was aggressive, smacking the puck directly toward my paddle. I returned it, and so on and so forth. There was a fine sweat on his brow, but mine was perfectly dry. He knocked the puck to the side of my slot, so close to getting in, but I was able to slam it into the side of the table and send it skittering back to him. He dove to block it, but missed by an inch, letting the puck slip perfectly into his slot. The scoreboard above us blinked for my side with a triumphant little whistle. I’d won.

Dean threw his paddle on the ground so hard that it bounced back up. I leapt in the air with a whoop, pumping my fist.

“HA!” I cried in Dean’s face. He looked furious. “YOU LIVE, BITCH!”

“Hey, fuck you!” he snapped, looking ready to break my neck.

“Watch your language!” Mr. Rafferty yelled from the front desk. “There are kids in here!”

“Sorry!” I yelled back. Then in a muted but still excited tone, I hissed at Dean, “Your next hour is _mine_!”

“Whatever,” he grumbled. “I want a rematch.”

“I bet you do, loser,” I cackled in his face like a maniac. I was so deliriously happy at that moment. I’d actually done it. I’d kept Dean on Earth for another hour.

“Rematch,” he growled. It was almost cute how frustrated he was getting. “I’ll give you another hour if you win.”

“And if you win? Not that it’ll happen, I’m just curious.”

Dean looked about ready to bust my head open on the table, but he said, “You take me back to the motel. Right away. All time voided.”

“That’s not a fair deal!” I balked.

“Take it or leave it.”

If Dean thought that he could bait me into playing another game and voiding his time, he was wrong. But he was dead right that I would play to give him another hour.

It was almost too easy. I won in a little under ten minutes. Dean punched the wall.

“Hey, knock it off!” I said, feigning irritation over my glow of victory. “This is a local place.”

“Again,” he said, voice low. I raised an eyebrow.

“You already owe me two hours. You sure you wanna make it three?”

“I’m about to make it zero.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

I won again.

This time Dean just slumped in his place, leaning against the table. My pride for winning and my glee at saving Dean for just a while longer melted into sadness. I was just buying time, like laying down tracks in front of the train as it ran. As soon as these three hours were up, it would be over. Everything.

“Dean,” I said quietly. The teens had moved to some racing game and the sound of tire squeals and cries of frustration filled up the space. I fumbled for something to say, something that would make all his problems go away and make him understand that he was important. Even if he didn’t know it, even if I didn’t know how, he _was_. What I came up with was, “Do you wanna play Guitar Hero?”

“What, so you can win another hour?” he scoffed, not looking up. My heart sank. I squared my jaw.

“No, as a team. Just to pass the time.”

He took a deep breath, knuckles going white on the table for just a moment. A part of me thought that he might flip it, or just leave and make his own way back to the motel. He could easily get there on foot before his three hours with me were up.

But he didn’t. He just nodded wordlessly and let me drag him to the Guitar Hero game. I let him choose the song, even though I knew he would choose some terrible 70s rock ballad, and he didn’t disappoint. I wasn’t ever very good at Guitar Hero, but Dean clearly had some experience and he hit every note.

“Now I know why you didn’t want to compete,” he said with a dry smile after our first round. “You suck at this.”

“Fuck off!” I said, smiling back. I gave him the last few tokens and told him, “Take these and play a round. I’m gonna go get some more tokens and some snacks.”

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Not really,” I chuckled. Dean actually smiled at that, even though it didn’t last long. I guess he wasn’t hungry either.

When I got back with thirty dollars’ worth of tokens and a bag of popcorn, Dean was leaned back in a chair, lazily playing his way through Boston’s More Than a Feeling. He glanced up at me and nodded without missing a beat. I thanked God for the dim lighting so that he couldn’t see me blush. He just looked so damn beautiful like that. Totally in his element. Maybe even a little bit happy.

I watched him finish the song and picked away at the popcorn. He got a near perfect score, of course.

“Come on,” he said, holding out the other guitar to me. I shook my head.

“Not a chance. I’d just drag you down.” He rolled his eyes.

“Yeah yeah, drama queen. Just get up here.”

“I’m the drama queen?” I chuckled, standing up and brushing my hands off on my pants. “You’re the one who’s two and a half hours from splattering brains on the North Star’s luxury carpet.”

“Two hours and fifteen minutes,” he corrected.

He chose a song—one that I didn’t even hate, _Take It Off_ by The Donnas—and we began. Dean’s fingers slid along the fret with ease while mine stumbled dumbly behind, missing note after note.

“You gotta hit the button right before it passes the line,” Dean coached. “And hold it like this.” He took a break from playing his guitar to readjust the position of my hands, the notes he was missing popping up on his half of the screen. I shivered under his touch. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched me like that, or at all.

I still sucked, but after that I wasn’t quite so abjectly horrible. I even managed to get three stars in our second round. Dean seemed to be in a merciful mood, however, and suggested we try some of the other games. We hopped around the arcade, alone now that the kids had gone home.

Dean was best at the shooting and quick-time games. I was better at timing games like Mortal Combat and pinball. We ended up spending the time until close rotating between our new favorite games and challenging each other whenever we found one with a multiplayer that we liked. I never lost track of the time, but I wanted Dean to, so pretended that I did too. Mr. Rafferty wasn’t in on my plan however, and at 2am sharp he yelled, “Last call! I’m closing up shop!”

As Dean and I made our way to the door, Mr. Rafferty stopped me and said, “Now you just go on home, Cameron. Don’t get into any trouble.”

“Yes, sir,” I said with a little mock salute. Mr. Rafferty clucked his tongue and nodded goodnight to the both of us.

“You both get home safe,” he said. The door chimed as we exited and Dean and I were once again standing in the dark, unsure of where to go from here.

There was a second of silence when we reached the car. We both knew there was only a half hour left. There were no more games I could play or deals I could make to put this off any longer. My thoughts wandered to the oak tree, but I was too tired to decide if I wanted to go there. Mostly I just wanted to go to sleep.

Without a word I pulled onto the road and started driving down the well-lit streets. We were the only ones of the road. It was the kind of quiet that you could only get very late at night in a small town. The kind of quiet where the soft crunch of tires on gravel could wake you up.

It didn’t take long to reach Heritage Heights. It was a stocky one story complex split into two halves facing each other, each with six apartments. It was a crummy old place to live, with spotty plumbing and locks so cheap and fragile that it was easier to pick than to use a key.

“Where are we?” asked Dean.

“My apartment.”

He followed me to the first apartment in the complex and entered my home. It was somehow even tinier on the inside than on the out, only a small combined kitchen and living room in the front and the bathroom and bedroom stuffed into the back. There were dirty clothes and band posters on every surface. I’d thrown a shoe during a breakdown and broken the ceiling light fixture in the living room, so now it was only lit by a bare bulb and a lava lamp by the couch.

“Home sweet home,” I said, not energetic enough to be embarrassed the way my parents raised me to be.

“What are we doing here?” Dean asked, looking me over as if I had an ulterior motive. I shrugged.

“I need to go to sleep,” I told him honestly. “I figured you could stay here until morning.”

Instantly Dean’s face contorted into an angry frown. He threw up his hands and groaned, “You said you would take me back to the motel!”

“I will, if you really want me to. But I’m exhausted. I don’t think I’d be a safe driver right now.”

“Then give me your keys.”

“Not a chance,” I laughed weakly. “Do you want to sleep here, or do you want me to drive you back to the motel?”

Dean cast his eyes to my filthy floor, fuming. His fists were balled at his sides and I could see him working not to snap at me. Then his shoulders started to shake and I realized he wasn’t angry, he was trying not to cry.

Delirious with lack of sleep and the weariness that comes from a long day full of anxiety, I closed the distance between me and Dean and laid my hand on his shoulder. He flinched away from the touch, as if I’d scalded him, and the shaking got worse. Taking a shot in the dark, I put my hand back. This time he didn’t move away. Instead he let out a choking sob.

That was all I needed to hear. My chest felt like it was filling with water as I wrapped my arms around Dean’s shoulders and pulled him into my embrace. Every place our skin met was warm and electric and shivering. Dean’s arms came around me and gripped me tightly, his fingers digging into my back like he was afraid I would float away if he let go even a little.

His legs started to buckle, so I lowered us to the ground and there we stayed on our knees for the last few minutes of Dean’s three hours.

“It’s my fault,” he sobbed into my shoulder. “It was my job to protect him, it’s my fault!”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, unsure if the words were true.

“It just should have been me. It should be me who's dead, not him! Me!”

“No,” I said firmly, despite the tears now rolling down my face. “You don’t deserve to die, Dean.”

“Yes, I do!”

“You don’t. And I know your brother didn’t think so.”

He was crying so hard that his breaths came in heaving gasps that he couldn’t control. His sobs were more like screams, raw and naked, crying out an agony that couldn’t be said any other way. He was screaming so much that I started to wonder if he’d been physically hurt, if he was dying. But I didn’t pull away to check. I just held him close, as if my touch would keep him from fracturing into pieces on my linoleum floor.

I held him there, taking deep breaths and encouraging him to do the same, telling him it would be okay even though I didn’t believe it, until he was so still that I thought he was asleep.

“Dean?” I whispered. My legs had long since turned to jelly from lack of movement. The clock on the stove read 4:16.

“Yeah,” he whispered back. He was limp in my arms, barely even holding onto me anymore. His eyes were closed, long lashes casting shadows like dandelion tufts under the yellow light.

“Let’s go to bed, okay?”

He nodded against my chest. His breathing was finally evened out, a steady rhythm rather than the frantic gasps and wails of before. A part of me wished I could let go like that, just once, and scream. Scream and cry and lash out at anyone who came near me like a wild animal.

But for now it was time to sleep. I helped Dean off the ground—his legs didn’t seem any steadier than mine—and arm over shoulder we stumbled on numb legs to my bedroom. I didn’t bother turning on the light, instead I just closed the door behind us to keep the room dark and guided Dean toward my box spring mattress on the floor. He collapsed on the bed the second he found it and, judging by the deepening of this breathing, was asleep just as quick. I took a moment to arrange my lone pillow under his head and lay my softest blanket over his shoulders. In a moment of brilliance, I even unlaced his boots and tugged them off his feet. Then I climbed into bed next to him.

With anyone else this sudden intimacy would have been strange. Maybe it would start to feel strange in the light of day. But in the dark after all that tragedy, after Dean spread his ribs apart and let me shove my unwashed hand into the cavity, this step felt like a small one.

I took a beat to appreciate the moment. To take in the warm breaths of the man across from me. The tickle in my stomach from having another heartbeat in the room. I was ready to sleep until the sun came down again. I was excited to see what Dean looked like in the daylight.

I gently shook his arm and he stirred.

“Yeah?” he said again, still not opening his eyes.

“Dean, are you listening? This is important.”

“Okay,” he said, shifting in place and half-heartedly raising his eyebrows. It would have to do.

“If you want to go back to the motel, wake me up first. Just tell me.” A tear welled up in my right eye and I let it fall freely to the mattress.

“I will,” he promised. I let my eyes close, focusing on the warmth from him. Already I was slipping into unconsciousness. “You have my word.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter hopefully posted later tonight. right now im helping my cousin brainstorm ideas for her ateez skyrim au and i havent felt this alive since i came up with the idea for this story


	3. Ash, ash--You poke and stir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uwu unedited exposition time. i have all these goddamn plans and no skills to make them happen T_T art imitates life, huh?

The room was still dark when I woke up, lit only by a sliver of sunlight through a crack in the curtain. 

Inches from my nose was a man with long brown lashes. Dean. He was still here. His breaths tickled my cheeks, but his sleep was fitful. His arms were held up to his chest, blanket cast away, fists clenching as his eyes moved erratically under his lids. He was mumbling something that I couldn’t make out.

I shook his arm and his eyes shot open with a gasp, already scanning the room like he expected to see a killer in the corner. His gaze landed on me and his breathing started to calm, the tension leaving his muscles. 

“It’s okay,” I whispered. I had to fight the urge to touch the tuft of hair just behind his ear. “It’s just me.”

I didn’t ask what the nightmare was about. I just laid there, sleepy and quiet, and watched Dean settle himself. Eventually he rolled onto his back and heaved out of bed, leaving me staring at nothing. Even though it had been that way for every night I’d slept here since I moved in, the sight of that empty half of the bed made me a little sad. 

“How are you feeling?” I asked. I still hadn’t moved.

“Better,” he said as he cracked his neck. I hoped the bed wasn’t too uncomfortable for him. “Still pretty crap, but better.”

“Good.” 

Dean was pulling his boots back on his feet, lacing them in double knots like a military cadet. It occured to me that he very well could have been in the military. I barely knew anything about him. He could be anyone. 

“Are you leaving?” I asked. I hoped I didn’t give away my fear at the prospect. I wasn’t ready for him to leave. 

“I don’t want to wear out my welcome,” he told me wryly. 

“Never,” I said. It felt true. “You can stay as long as you need to. Besides,” I paused, considering whether I should play this card. “Do you think you should be alone right now?”

It felt dirty to say. My worry was genuine--Dean had been ready to end it all less than twelve hours ago. No one gets over feeling that way that quickly, and I couldn’t stand it if I let Dean leave this morning and he hurt himself. But if I’m completely honest, the main reason I asked that question was because I didn’t want him to go.

Dean was still for a second. He was facing my window, the one with the dark curtain that was letting the light in. I could see the thoughts running through his head: everything that had happened last night, the prospect of going back to the motel room, the fact that the hours he’d promised were long paid off. He could go. He could do whatever he pleased, he’d fulfilled his obligation to me. 

“I don’t want to impose,” he said quietly.

“You’re not!” I sensed him swaying over to my side. “I’d be happy for the company.”

Finally, I’d said something true. Maybe Dean could feel it, because when I said that he nodded, as if it was just the excuse he needed to stay. He turned to me, still laying on my side, and flashed a sideways smile. 

“If you insist.”

I couldn’t help smiling back. 

“I hope you like Lucky Charms and box macaroni, because that’s all I have,” I chirped, suddenly energized by the assurance that I wouldn’t be lonely, at least for a while. I checked the clock. “Is eleven forty-eight breakfast or lunch? And don’t you dare say brunch.”

Dean laughed. Honest to God, a real laugh from a real boy in my apartment. The sound was low and reserved and genuine. Not forced or done out of politeness. I thought I might burst from the pride.

“Breakfast,” he said.

I beamed and pulled out two paper bowls for Lucky Charms.

In the last year or so I had become so reliant on Lucky Charms as my primary food source that I’d committed to making the forty-five minute drive to the nearest Costco to load up on giant sacks of the stuff. Each one was like a pillowcase full of life-giving sugar, and I genuinely didn’t think I’d be alive without them. I was down to my last bag, but it was still half full. More than enough for me and Dean to eat our fill this morning. 

“Do you want yours dry or with water?” I asked, not bothering to check if I had milk left in the fridge. I knew I did, and I knew it had been there for over a month. Thankfully, Dean didn’t seem phased by the question. 

“Dry,” he said. I filled his bowl and mine, then splashed some water from the tap into mine.

“Wait, I thought you were kidding,” he said in mock horror. “You  _ actually _ put water in your cereal?”

“It tastes good!” I insisted, although honestly I could barely taste it. It was just a way to hydrate without having to drink water, like giving wet food to a sick old cat. “Milk dilutes the flavor of the cereal.”

“You sound like a crazy person. Do you know how insane you sound?”

“Try it!” I said, playing the role of fun roommate and ignoring the pit paying rent in my stomach. I shoved my bowl under Dean’s wrinkled nose. 

“No way,” he said, jokingly pushing the bowl aside and accepting the dry one I’d made for him instead. 

We sat down together on my ratty couch after clearing some of the trash off it. It was a little embarrassing to have someone be in my home when it was so messy--a remnant of my clean-freak mother, I guess--but I got the feeling that Dean had seen worse. Besides, I didn't have the energy to clean.

I flicked on my crummy box TV and started flipping through channels.

“What do you wanna watch?”

Dean was already several spoonfuls into his cereal, his cheeks puffed with the stuff. At least he seemed to have more of an appetite this morning. He shrugged.

“Whatever,” he said, the sounds muffled by cereal bits. “As long as it’s not Deadliest Catch. I’ve seen enough of that in motels across America to last a lifetime.”

“Across America?” I said, scrolling past infomercials and cartoons about talking dogs. “You travel a lot?”

“Yeah, me and my brother did.” He'd become suddenly very interested in a commercial for heartworm medication and wouldn't avert his eyes to look at me. “Just seeing the sights, taking odd jobs when we could find ‘em.”

“There aren't a lot of sights to see in Spearfish. Or in South Dakota at all, unless you count all the ghost towns.”

“Yeah,” was all Dean said. I guess he'd run out of steam after talking about his brother. I kicked myself for pushing the subject. I was starting to pick up the fact that Dean and his brother were really close, and there weren't many questions I could ask about his life that wouldn't lead back to him.

After another minute of cycling through channels we settled on some show where an old British man was teaching us how to break down a whole chicken. Dean seemed genuinely interested, and I was just happy to have a calming voice in the room. We stayed like that for a while, Dean paying close attention as the chef identified different joints and easily separated the chicken, me paying close attention to Dean. Every once in a while he would hum approval at something on the screen, or inhale through his nose as if he could smell the onion and garlic cooking across the airwaves. 

During a segment where the chef (Robert Julian, according to the title card) was discussing the merits of stocks versus broths, my phone started to buzz in my pocket. 

“One sec,” I said, peeling myself off the couch and slipping back to my bedroom to take the call. No one who calls me on the phone is calling with good news, and I didn’t want Dean to overhear. 

“Hello?” I said into the microphone.

“Hello, my name is Amanda,” came the voice over the phone. She had a friendly voice and spoke with the quickness that someone who had to introduce themselves a lot has. “I’m a counselor at Black Hills University and I’m trying to get in touch with Cameron Smith. Is this them?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I affirmed with a wince. This was  _ definitely  _ bad news. 

“Great. How are you today?”

“I’m fine.” Then after a beat I added, “How are you?”

“I’m doing well, thanks. Cameron, I’m calling because our records are showing that you’ve missed quite a few days of class this semester and haven’t been turning in many assignments. Were you aware of that?”

I closed my eyes. I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. I should just throw my phone in the lake and throw myself in after it. I should put my head in the door jam and slam the door as hard as I could. I should boil a kettle of water and put my hands on either side until I couldn’t move my fingers anymore.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Cameron, I don’t mean to be alarmist but if you don’t bring your grades up soon you’ll drop below a two-point-zero GPA and will be forced to withdraw from Black Hills.”

“I know.” I slumped down to the floor, praying that the speaker distorted my voice enough that Amanda couldn’t hear it shaking. “I’m working on it.”

“If you’re having trouble keeping up with the course work we have lots of study groups and tutors on campus, most of which are completely free. You can always reach out to your teachers, too. Remember, they’re there to help you learn, so all you have to do is ask.”

“I know.”

“It looks like you’re in your senior year. You’re so close to graduating, you just gotta get those grades up. I’m going to send you an email with some information on study groups, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“It’s no problem. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Try to get those grades up. Have a good rest of your day!”

“You too.”

There was a click on the other end of the line and I was left in silence, holding the phone to my ear with no one on the other end. I was afraid if I moved I would explode, so I stayed as still as I could. My heart was pounding. I focused on a poster on my wall, then on the molding near the floor, then on one grain in the wood on that molding, filled in with ancient white paint. It looked like someone had carved it with an ant-sized knife, back and forth, until it was just a tiny slit in the giant tree it came from. Sap dripping under the cut. Slow and thick. Back and forth.

“Cameron?” Dean called. Not from the couch, though. He was right outside my door. Involuntarily my breathing got even shallower, even faster. I couldn’t let him see me like this. He would instantly know that I’m a failure and a freak, and my one tether to the world would walk out the door and probably kill himself and I would float off into space and freeze to death. 

“Just a minute!” I called back, managing to sound like a human being and not a mass of black nothing like how I felt. Then, quieter but loud enough for him to hear me I said, “Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks for letting me know,” and loudly snapped my phone shut. 

I rubbed my eyes, checking for tears, and when there were none I went to open the door. I froze there for a moment, hand over the knob. I was suddenly aware of the fact that there was another person on the other side of the door. That there was someone waiting to see if I was okay. It occurred to me that I didn’t need to lie, that Dean wouldn’t think any less of me. He might even be able to help. The thought made my throat stiff. I opened the door.

“Everything okay?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. 

“Yeah, it was just my school,” I said. Dean waited for more information. I pushed my face into a casual smile. “They were just reminding me about some assembly on campus. Something about a poetry slam.” I pretended to gag, and Dean chuckled. My stomach felt full of stones.

“Tell me about it. I can’t stand that touchy-feely crap,” he said, turning from the door to lead me back to the couch. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. 

“Hey, Dean?” I said to his back. He turned to look at me, expectant, and I nearly forgot what I was going to say. “Do you play Mario Kart?”

“Not in a long time,” he said, eyes narrowed to a competitive edge. “But I’m sure I can still beat your ass.”

“Wanna bet on it?”

“I wouldn’t want to rob you.”

“You’re on.”

In no time at all we each had a GameCube controller in hand and the little blue box was whirring with life. We sat on the floor, knees nearly touching and thumbed to choose our characters. Dean went immediately to Mario, and I chose my default of Yoshi. To my great satisfaction, Dean was good competition. I’d long ago learned the tricks to beat every bot and track in the game, but Dean was a new animal. He chose the fastest and heaviest kart he could and used it like a wrecking ball on the track. 

His favorite move was to come up from behind me and bump me into a tailspin. Then he would cry that it was cheating when I bounced back with a well-placed banana peel, and we played neck and neck for hours. 

Until there came a knock at the door and we both froze. I almost never got visitors for good news, and judging by Dean’s reaction he had similar luck.

“Just a sec, I’ll get it,” I said, trudging to the door and wiping the crumbs off my sweater as I went. 

I unlocked the door and opened it a crack to peer out at the man at my door. He was middle-aged, with a scruffy beard and a trucker hat covering his white-streaked hair. He looked like he hadn’t gotten any decent sleep or a shower in several days. That’s the pot calling the kettle black, I guess.

“Pardon me,” he said in a firm but not unkind tone of voice. “Are you Cameron Smith?”

“Yeah,” I said warily. From behind me, Dean shifted from his seat on the floor.

“My name is Bobby Singer. I’m looking for a friend of mine and I heard you might have seen him.” 

He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a folded photograph. It was clearly a group shot with the other members hidden in the fold, but staring up at me was the unmistakable face of Dean. He was leaning against the hood of a sleek black car, no older than eighteen, not a care in the world. I froze. 

“Sorry, I don’t--” I stammered. Before I could finish my thought, Bobby’s eyes looked past me, into the apartment to where Dean stood only a few feet behind me. The man huffed a sigh and slumped his shoulders. 

“Damnit, boy, I was scared you’d gone and gotten yourself killed,” Bobby snapped. Dean seemed almost bashful, stuffing his hands in his pockets and avoiding the older man’s gaze. “Come here and let me get a good look at you.”

Dean complied, shuffling to the door. I tried to read him, to figure out if we were in trouble. Maybe I should try to slam the door in this guy’s face and make a run for it. What would Dean want me to do? My stomach was twisting into knots.

He must have sensed my anxiety, because Dean gave me a little nod and took the door from me, opening it wide enough that Bobby could see him in his entirety. 

“See?” he said, opening his arms. “I’m f--”

Out of nowhere, Bobby pulled out a flask and splashed Dean in the face with its contents. I gasped, thinking for a moment that it was some kind of acid, but Dean just blinked and wiped the water from his eyes, more irritated than anything.

“I’m fine,” he finished. 

“What was that?” I cried out as Dean used the bottom of his shirt to dry his face. I put all my effort into averting my gaze from his exposed navel.

“It’s just water, Cam,” Dean explained. “It’s an old superstition. It’s supposed to be good luck.”

“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I believed him.

“Give us a minute, would ya?” he said, stepping out onto the stoop with Bobby and leaving me alone in the doorway. 

I nodded and closed the door behind him. I didn’t want to betray Dean’s privacy even though I was sick with worry. Dean might not come back inside. He might just get into the car with this strange man and I’d never see him again. 

Which wass stupid for a lot of reasons, the least of which being the fact that I’d known him for less than a full day.

I wandered back to the couch and picked at my cereal. I plucked a marshmallow out of the bowl and sucked on it even though I could barely taste it. The game was still paused on the TV, Mario and Yoshi waiting for the race to begin again. I sat and I waited for Dean to come back. Time seemed to slow as every second on the clock became a minute. After what was probably only a minute or two, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I moved from my place on the couch back to the door, just close enough that I could make out the conversation on the other side. 

“I appreciate that, Bobby. But I’m fine,” Dead said, his voice muffled by the thin door.

“You’re full of shit is what you are,” Bobby said. Dean let out a breathy laugh at that. Bobby’s tone was playful. They were clearly close, or they had been at least. “Just be careful.” There was a pause and the tone went serious. “Also…we need to talk about what to do with Sam. Did you want to come to the pyre?”

“No,” Dean said. “No, just do it.”

“Are you sure, Dean?” Bobby asked. His voice was soft under the thick backwoods accent. “This might be your last chance to say goodbye.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll burn him on Sunday night, if you change your mind.”

“Alright.”

There was a moment of silence between the two men that felt so strangely tender that I felt badly for being in on it. Dean told me that his father had died, but this guy seemed perfectly alive to me.

“You know it would be weird if you were actually okay, don’t you?” Bobby said in a half-joking voice.

“I know,” Dean replied, managing a weak chuckle. 

“All right. So long as you know. I’m always there if you need anything, Dean. Any kind of favor. Just give me a call.”

“Will do.”

“Good. See you around, kid. Don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t. Stay safe out there, Bobby.”

Footsteps started to move away from the door and I dashed away from it, practically leaping back to my place on the couch. I’d just landed in the seat when the door swung open and Dean came back inside, face unreadable. 

“How much did you hear?” he asked me.

“Nothing,” I said, glancing up at him for just a second before putting my attention entirely on my Lucky Charms. 

“I know you were listening,” he said. I froze. “So why don’t you just tell me what you heard.”

I swallowed hard. I was caught in a lie without a fighting chance at denial. Even worse than that, I’d been party to a moment that I had no business being in. I should have just let Dean have his privacy and let him leave if he wanted to. I shouldn’t have been hovering over him, making sure he wasn’t going to leave. Of course he was going to leave. Why would he stay?

“Not much,” I said, head hung low. “Just something about a pyre at the very end.”

Dean sighed and plopped down on the couch next to me. I hazarded a look at him and to my relief, he didn’t seem angry. Just tired. And, as he stared straight ahead to the TV screen, more than a little sad. 

“Who was that guy?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.

“Bobby. He’s an old friend of my dad. Dad worked a lot and he went on a lot of trips, so Bobby took care of us sometimes. He’s a good guy.”

“What did your dad do?”

“Travelling salesman.”

That was a lie. I could tell immediately in the way Dean said it like he was reading off a script and was getting tired of the line. I decided not to mention it, though. Dean might not be putting all his energy into lying about it, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. 

Apparently Dean  _ really  _ didn’t want to talk about it, because he cleared his throat and asked, “So, you’re in school?”

“Yeah, technically,” I said. I’d just picked up a power mushroom and Dean hadn’t noticed. I was primed to sneak up from behind him. 

“Technically? What kind of answer is--damn it!” He swore as I whoosed past him and across the finish line, beating him by an inch. He frowned in the spirit of competition and quickly loaded up the next game. 

“I’m in school for business, but--”

“Business? For real?” he said, cutting me off in real life and in the game as he bumped me into another kart. 

“Does that surprise you?” I asked, knowing it did. It always did.

“Sure as hell does. Shouldn’t you be majoring in, I don’t know. Fine arts?”

“I can’t draw,” I chuckled. “I can’t manage a portfolio either, though, so,” I shrugged.

“So what, you go to Black Mountain? Black Ridge...?”

“Black Hills,” I corrected him. I was falling behind in the race, losing my train of thought as I searched for a power-up to save me. “Go Yellow Jackets!” I mock-cheered as I picked up another mushroom. 

“And how’s...that?” he asked, clearly distracted by my new lead. 

“It’s making my parents very proud and not doing much else,” I said, meaning it as a joke and surprising myself with the truth of it. 

“You don’t wanna go to school?” he said. He had this curious tone, like he was genuinely surprised.

“That’s not it. It’s just something I have to do.”

“Have to?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. Dean was in the lead again, knocking me and Luigi to the back, fighting for second. “For one thing, my parents would kill me if I didn’t. Plus I need to get a good job after school.”

“Right. Makes sense,” Dean said, like it didn’t make any sense at all.

We passed the day away like that, eating Luck Charms and my last packages of ramen noodles, playing video games for hours and watching trash TV when we got tired. Six o’clock came and went, then ten, and then it was two in the morning again. Neither of us even mentioned going to bed before then. Neither of us asked what the plan was, or where Dean would sleep. We both just yawned and cracked our backs and shuffled back to my room. 

I gave Dean a pair of old pajamas and a tee shirt and let him change in the bathroom. He left his big boots right next to the bed, like he planned to roll out and slide them back on in the middle of the night. Which, for all I knew, was his exact plan. He seemed to hate being without them. It was like he was always waiting to run from a house fire. 

When he came out of the bathroom, fully changed with his clothes wrapped up in his arms, he wouldn’t look at me. I was sitting on the bed, cross-legged, embarrassed to be waiting for him but waiting for him anyway.

“What’s up?” I said, noticing the look on his face. 

He took a deep breath and set his clothes down on my dresser. Then he pulled something out from the folds. Something cold and heavy and shiny. It was the gun.

My chest froze mid-breath. How did he get that? What was he going to do? I thought he felt better today, was that all a sham? Was it over?

“Bobby brought me this,” he told me. I couldn’t speak. “He found it at the motel when he was looking for me.” He took a shaky breath and, taking the gun by the barrel, held it out to me. “I need you to take this,” he said.

Without a thought I snatched it from him gingerly. It was heavier than I expected. In movies and when Dean held it, it didn’t look much heavier than a paperweight, but my hand sunk from the mass. In my hand it suddenly felt more like a bomb than a gun. 

“Make sure I can’t find it, okay? But if something happens, give it to me.”

“What?” I said, still reeling from the cold weapon in my fingers. The safety was on, I could tell that much, but the thing still terrified me. Two clicks and a flick of the wrist and Dean could be gone. I could be gone.

“I’m okay tonight,” he told me, his tone serious. “But I don’t know if I’ll be okay tomorrow. I need you to keep that for when I know I’m, you know.” He averted his gaze to the floor. 

“When you’re ready,” I offered. 

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Then.”

“Okay,” I swallowed. “Wanna step outside for a second so I can hide it?”

Dean nodded and left, the outer door closing softly behind him. My mind started reeling for a place to hide the explosive little thing, which was feeling more and more like a threat every second I held it. 

I thought about the vent above the stove, the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom, even inside the box spring of the couch--which felt like the best hiding place out of all of them. In the end, though, I thought of the old saying, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” and I lifted my mattress and slid the pistol under my side of the bed. When I sat back down I could hardly feel a change, and Dean would be on the other side. It was as safe of a hiding place as I could think of. 

Dean was waiting just outside the front door of the apartment, rubbing his arms to stay warm against the chilly fall air in his thin flannel pants. 

“All good?” he asked me. What a big question for so few syllables. 

I took him back to the bed and let him get positioned on his side before joining him in the pitch blackness. Like the princess and the pea, now that Deas was lying there with me, the gun felt like a boulder underneath us. I was certain he could feel the hollow barrel and the clip full of lead digging into his back, but he didn’t say anything. He just curled into the pillow and closed his eyes, as if willing himself to forget the enormity of what he’d just asked of me. 

I couldn’t sleep for at least an hour. I could only breath in time with Dean and remind myself that he was warm and alive, and that he would still be warm and alive in the morning. I fell asleep to the beat of his heart, real or imagined, warming my room like radiation.


	4. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

Sunday morning started with Dean having another nightmare. This one was more violent than the last. He woke me up with his frightened growls and animal mutterings of, “stop” and “no” in a tone so broken that I nearly joined him in saying it. 

The same as the night before, I kept my eyes wide and shook his arm until his dilated green eyes opened in a flash. After a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark reality of the bedroom, he finally seemed to recognize me. He groaned.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rolling onto his back and throwing an arm over his eyes.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It seemed pretty bad.”

“Yeah.”

It was then that I remembered the gun under my mattress and shivered. I hated having that thing so close. I hated having it within arms reach, fully loaded and ready to fire. Why didn’t Dean just throw it away? Drop it at the post office and let them deal with it? Last night he’d said that if anything happened, I should find it and give it back to him. What could that mean? What did he think could happen?

“You okay?” Dean was giving me a strange look. I must have been giving him a pretty powerful hundred yard stare. I did my best to smile.

“Yeah, just zoned out. What time is it?”

Dean checked his watch and lit the screen. The glow cast a sickly green haze over his cheeks.

“Almost noon.” He chuckled to himself. “I must be really out of it. I never sleep that late.”

“Funny. I never get up this early.”

Dean was out of bed and had his boots on before I’d even thrown off my blankets. He went into the bathroom to change clothes and I realized that I hadn’t showered at least since the night I met Dean, and probably a few more days than that. 

“I’m gonna shower,” I told him, speech muddled by my tiredness.

“I’ll go after you’re done.”

I gave him a half-hearted nod and shuffled to the bathroom, which was just as dirty as the rest of my apartment. There were short clippings of hair on the tile from my last haircut, and specks of toothpaste dotted the bathroom mirror. When I undressed and got into the shower, I noticed there was a ring of soap scum around the bath. It’s funny how things like that never bother you until you have someone over, and then it’s all you can think about. I had to stop in the middle of shampooing to wipe down the tub ring with a rag just so I could think about something other than how disgusting I was. 

At least the water was warm and comforting. I tried not to run it too hot so there would be some water left over for Dean, but I lost myself in watching the soap circle the drain and feeling the scalding water pound down on my back. Something about it just lulled me into a trance where I couldn’t think of anything else. It was like being under a flaming waterfall and I just wanted it to beat me into grains of sand. When I finally regained my willpower and turned off the shower my skin was tight and red. I ran my fingers over it, enjoying the unnatural heat coming off my own skin.

I dried off and found Dean in the living room, tuned into some antique car show on TV. A very excitable man with a goatee was explaining that this particular car had one hell of an engine and custom leather seats, and after that he trailed off into jargon I couldn’t even begin to understand.

“Shower’s free,” I said, drying some of the water in my ear with the sleeve of my sweater. 

“Thanks,” he said, distracted, as he very slowly climbed off the couch and walked to the bathroom, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“I’ll catch you up on whatever you miss,” I told him. “I think the main guy and the one on the motorcycle are gonna kiss.”

Dean let a puff of air out through his nose, which was about the joke deserved, and disappeared into the bathroom. His shower only lasted a couple minutes. The water stopped with a creak from the faucet and after another minute Dean was back in the living room, dressed in his old clothes and boots. I felt guilty for not offering to wash them, but I didn’t have any quarters for my own laundry, let alone his. 

“You used all the hot water,” he said, smiling so I would know he wasn’t upset. 

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I didn’t notice how long I was in there.”

“No problem. I’ve had my share of cold showers.”

He joined me on the couch and tuned back into the car show. We sat there for a while, me trying to figure out what the big fuss over some rusty Cadillac was and Dean alternately explaining that it was the original leather interior that made it special and checking the clock. I debated asking for several minutes before I cracked.

“What are you waiting for?”

Dean seemed surprised that I’d noticed his incredibly obvious behavior and blushed.

“Nothing,” he said. I raised an eyebrow. He folded. “Well, it’s Sunday isn’t it?”

I wracked my brain for what he could mean by that.

“Are you missing church or something?”

“Bobby’s burning Sammy tonight.”

“Oh.”

It was my turn to blush. How could I have forgotten that? I bet Dean had been thinking about it ever since his old friend’s visit. I’d been so caught up in trash TV and the relief of good company that I’d forgotten Dean had lost his younger brother. I was as much a distraction for him as he was for me.

“Do you want to go?” I asked. “We could take my car.” 

That wasn’t totally true, my car was nearly out of gas and I was out of money aside from the twenty dollar bill in my pocket, but we could jump off that bridge when we came to it. 

“Nah,” he said, keeping his eyes trained to the men on the TV. Some round man in a bolo tie had bought the Cadillac and was shaking hands with the expert who’d sold it. 

“Are you sure? I hate to be that person, but it might help to say goodbye.”

“Why? He can’t hear me.”

“I don’t think that’s really why people have funerals, Dean.”

He looked at me, a person whose biggest funeral was for a grandmother that I’d never liked when I was a kid. A person with a dirty sock thrown over the shade of their only lamp. A person who used up all the hot water. What business did I have handing out advice about loss? He covered his eyes with one hand and I wondered if he was going to cry, but when spoke he sounded more tired than sad.

“It’s a long drive.”

I snorted through my nose. These conversations would be a lot shorter if Dean weren’t so worried about imposing. 

“Just to Sioux Falls, right? That’s only a five hour drive. Four and half if we speed.”

“I can’t just take your car.”

“Of course not, I’m coming too.”

“You have school.”

“I’m all caught up in school,” I lied, staring straight into Dean’s eyes.

He pursed his lips and nodded.

“I’ll give Bobby a call then,” he said. I smiled. 

“I’ll pack up. We’re gonna stay the night at least, right?”

“Yeah.”

Just like that it was decided. My heart pounded with excitement. I’d never been on an impromptu trip anywhere, not with a real destination in mind. Not with another person. As I threw some spare sweaters and underwear in a backpack I couldn’t help thinking about the long country roads we’d be going down, the trees that would pass by in a blur. 

All of a sudden I felt sick and had to stop, bracing myself on the bathroom wall, hand halfway to my toothbrush. I breathed heavily, trying not to vomit. The trunk of the oak tree was rushing towards me at a hundred miles an hour. 

Eventually I failed and threw up half-digested Lucky Charms in the sink. The sticky brownish-pink sludge stuck to the side of the basin, slowly sliding down the drain. I watched it go, the string of spit leading from my mouth to the sink shuddering with my huffing breaths. The puke didn’t smell like anything, which I thought was weird. But it was hot. Like a stew.

The front door opened and closed, meaning Dean was done with his call. I hurriedly wiped off my mouth and ran the tap to wash the gunk down the sink. When Dean popped his head into the bathroom I was swishing cold water between my teeth. I spat and wiped my mouth again.

“Are we good to go?” I asked before he could question me. Hopefully he would just assume I’d been brushing my teeth and wouldn’t notice the fleck of green marshmello stuck on the sink’s stopper or the inflamed vessel in my eye. 

“I’m ready,” he said with a nod. 

“Me too.”

So we headed out to the car and I tossed my backpack in the backseat and let Dean slide into the driver’s side. He adjusted the seat and the mirrors and I looked up at the sun from the passenger seat, hidden behind a grey sheet of clouds. It looked cold and I shivered. 

“We need gas,” he said. I nodded, liking that he’d said  _ we _ . 

Dean pulled into the gas station just outside of town, the one that tourists always came through, and filled the tank. Thankfully he had a couple dollars on him and didn’t ask me for my twenty. 

I was furious with myself. I felt so tired and sick and heavy and hollow and this was the absolute worst time to feel that way. Something  _ good  _ was finally happening to me. Someone was in this stupid car with me, saying  _ we  _ needed gas, and I still couldn’t act like a normal person. If I kept this up for too much longer, Dean would find out what a total trash fire I was and that would be it. I would be alone again. I couldn’t let that happen.

I clambered out of the car and said, “I’m going for snacks. Do you want anything?”

“Fritos,” he said immediately, looking up from the meter. “And one of those giant fountain drinks of Mountain Dew.”

“The forty-two ounce ones?” I asked, laughing a little in disbelief. 

“If that’s the biggest they’ve got.”

“Okay. It’s your pancreas,” I said, shaking my head and smiling to myself. 

See? I could be normal. Cameron was cool and quirky, but not a burden. Not a failure. Not a psycho. At least not to Dean. Not if I could help it.

I emerged from the store with Dean’s order, along with some gummy worms, some Chex Mix, and a Monster energy for myself. He was leaning against the driver’s side of the car, waiting for me, midday sun turning the crown of his head gold. It was a stupidly pretty image for a gas station parking lot. 

“You’re an angel,” he said, taking the soda and the chips from my hand, lips already wrapped around the straw and drinking deep. 

We took a moment in the car to rip into the snacks and chug our toxic waste before Dean started up the car again and pulled onto the highway. 

As we pulled out of town, Dean almost absent-mindedly flipped through the radio stations until he found some classic rock channel I’d never stayed on for more than a second. He seemed more at ease as soon as the music was playing, relaxing back into the seat and tapping out a drum solo on the steering wheel. 

I didn’t know what else to do with myself, so I pulled the map of the state out of the glove box and started charting our course. Unfortunately for me, it was a straight shot on highway ninety all the way to Sioux Falls, no navigation needed. 

“Hey, Dean,” I said, knowing that too much silence would kill me. “How did you get to Spearfish?”

He shifted in his seat and I wondered if there was  _ any  _ question I could ask about him that he was comfortable answering. 

“I walked.”

“From where?” I balked.

“Cold Oak.”

“That old ghost town by Deadwood? What were you doing there?”

“Getting my brother.”

“Oh.”

Of course. Dean said his brother had died hours before we met. I couldn’t imagine how someone could die in Cold Oak, though. It was a deserted mining town, like a lot of towns in that area. The only people who went down there now were amateur ghost hunters and the occasional local historian. But, once again, I’d already pushed too far. 

“Do you believe in ghosts, Dean?” I asked, hoping that he would make the Deadwood connection and not the dead brother connection. 

“There’s no such thing,” he said flatly. 

“Yeah, I agree. It’s interesting to think about, though.”

As hard as I tried to resuscitate it, the conversation died there. I kicked myself for asking that stupid question, and I mentally kicked Dean a little for not having a single thing I could talk to him about without spiraling into bad memories. Then I kicked myself even harder for thinking that. He’d just lost his brother a couple days ago and we were driving to his funeral, I couldn’t expect him not to think about it. What kind of asshole gets mad that someone cares more about their dead brother than their own smalltalk?

I watched the roadside signs advertising fast food and roadside motels fly by as the dark cloud around me got heavier and heavier. Dean was going to notice soon, he would have to, and that thought only sent me deeper. I should have just gone to the oak tree. I should’ve taken Dean’s gun and blown my brains out. I shouldn’t be here. I can’t be here. I should be dead. I should just be fucking dead, then I would be out of the way. Then I wouldn’t be a failure, I wouldn’t be anything. I should just go and die. I want to die. Shit. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

“I love this song.”

Dean turned up the radio. I could barely hear it over the screaming in my head, but I recognized the song. There was a vague memory of hearing a cover of it at some rock show a few years ago, and that spark of nostalgia was so distracting that I lost my train of thought. 

Not to mention that Dean was slamming his palms on the wheel in time with the beat and doing an exaggerated lip sync, all bared teeth and flicking tongue. I was struck dumb by the display. Then, as Dean met my eye and winked, mouthing the words, I realized something. He wasn’t just a big fan of the song, he was trying to make me smile. 

We were driving to his brother’s funeral and  _ he  _ was trying to make  _ me  _ smile. 

My throat went tight as the world narrowed to me and this stupid kind stranger. 

“Thunder!” he bellowed in time with the music. 

“Thunder!” I screamed back.

“Thunder!” 

“THUNDER!” I cried, voice breaking on a crazed laugh. I felt like I was floating. Like I was in a dream. 

When the lyrics started, Dean screeched every line. Not a genuine voice, but a grating wail to match the singer. I couldn’t stop smiling. I picked up an air guitar and shredded the frets as hard as I could, doing my best to follow along with what little I knew of the song. 

As we neared the end we were both laughing, both aware that we were laughing too hard. 

“Yeah, it’s alright!” Dean sang through his chuckles. “We’re doing fine!”

“Yeah, it’s alright! We’re doing fine!” we sang together. 

The song ended and the next one came on, Walk This Way by Aerosmith, and we sang that one too. Then we sang Piano Man, and Any Way You Want It, and Fortunate Son, and Black Dog, and Smokin’, and Working for the Weekend, and a dozen other songs that I didn’t know and Dean didn’t like and we sang them anyway. We sang until our throats were raw, then we drank some Mountain Dew and went back to singing. We sang as we got weird looks from other drivers on the highway. We sang until we were too tired to do anything but tap out the beat on our knees and stay inside the lines on the road. 

I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep until Dean shook me awake. The sun was just setting and the whole car was bathed in apricot-gold light. 

“Are we there?” I asked, pulling myself up in the seat to look out the window. 

“Yeah. Right on time.”

The car was parked next to a run-down two-story house covered in chipped blue paint and shuddered windows. Littered all around the house like dry leaves were totaled and rusted cars piled in stacks. Discarded rims and tires and engines sat collecting scummy water on the ground. 

As I was taking all of that in, the front door opened and the man from earlier in the week, Bobby, emerged. He was in the same flannel and trucker hat combo, and when he saw me his eyes narrowed, but he gave a small smile when his eyes landed on Dean.

Dean got out of the car to meet him and the two exchanged a brief hug, complete with macho back-slapping and a whispered word between them. 

I swallowed my anxieties and joined Dean and Bobby.

“--glad you decided to come,” Bobby said.

“You knew I would,” said Dean.

“Sure, but you still had me worried.” Bobby turned to me and gave a tip of his hat. “Cameron.”

“Hi, Bobby,” I said, trying to not sound as awkward as I felt. 

“Why don’t you two come inside for a beer? You oughta be beat after your drive.”

“That sounds great,” I said.

The inside of the house was much warmer and cleaner than the outside. It had dark maroon wallpaper and every available surface was covered in papers and books. There were oil paintings of forests and rivers hung framed on the walls, along with printed out photographs of blurry faces and newspaper clippings about electrical disturbances and other odd occurrences that I couldn’t connect. 

I let Bobby and Dean lead me into the kitchen, where Bobby cracked open a beer for me and handed it over. I nodded gratefully and took a deep sip, trying to remember the last time I’d had a beer with friends. It had been a while. 

When I finished my drink I found Bobby watching me curiously, waiting for a reaction. I smiled, to show that I liked the drink, and his eyes flitted away. I picked at the label on the bottle and examined the linoleum floor. 

“Dean,” Bobby said, tone serious. “We have some matters to discuss.”

Dean nodded, jaw tight, and gave me a look. I knew when I wasn’t wanted in a room, and for once I was glad to be excused. 

“I’ll just be out by the car,” I muttered, going out the way I came in and propping myself up in the hood of my car to watch the sunset.

I wondered what kind of tradition it was to burn someone when they died. Not as cremation, but on a pyre. It felt like something the Vikings would do. Put their dead on a boat and send it out onto the water, then light the whole thing up with a flaming arrow. There were no big lakes anywhere around Sioux Falls that I could think of, so probably they would just burn him here. In the scrapyard. 

The idea made me a little bit sad. The next saddest thing was that Dean, Bobby, and I were the only people here to mourn this kid, and I’d never even met him. Was there no one else that should be here? I know Dean’s parents were dead, but didn’t he have friends? Didn’t his brother have friends? 

I started to think of who would come to my funeral when I died. My parents, probably. Some of my Black Hills friends, out of obligation. Would Trish from the diner come? Maybe, if only to say “I told you so” and stub out her cigarette on my headstone. I smirked mirthlessly and took another drink of my beer. It didn’t taste very good, too watery and sour, but I was always happy to accept free booze. 

“Fuck that!” Dean yelled from inside the house. 

I nearly choked on my drink. I felt too guilty about the last time I’d eavesdropped on Dean and Bobby to do it again, so I just hummed to myself and slowly drained my bottle.

By the time Dean came to get me, the sun was fully set and I was flipping my empty beer bottle in the air under the dusky light of the first few stars. He looked exhausted. He had dark circles making his eyes look hollow in the shadow of his brow bone and there were deep lines on either side of his mouth. 

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“We’re gonna burn him soon,” he said in response. His face was stiff and pale as a strarched sheet. I caught the bottle and held it gently in my hands. “Probably in about an hour.”

I nodded, bit my lip, and asked, “What were you and Bobby talking about?”

“We have some business to take care of after the funeral,” he told me, only creating more questions. “I’m not coming back to Spearfish with you.”

My mouth went dry. It shouldn’t have, but it did. It was like someone had thrown a dark sheet over me, like I was just old furniture. I cursed myself. What did I think would happen? Did I really think that Dean needed me the way I’d so quickly come to need him? He had family, he had Bobby. For all I knew, he had friends and a job and a million other things more worth his time than me. If I had the choice I would leave me behind, too.

“Okay,” I said, pushing a smile. 

“Thanks for letting me stay, I just--”

“No, it’s fine. I was happy to have you.”

“And thanks for, uh,” he stumbled on his words, rubbing the back of his neck. “For that night.”

“Yeah. I’d do it again.”

“Yeah.”

That was that. The end of our little misadventure. It ended how it started, I guess. Just the two of us, awkward and alone, with a dead man an hour away. 

In the end, the pyre they burned Dean’s brother on  _ was  _ a lot like a Viking funeral. They didn’t set him out on a lake, but they built what looked like a huge wooden dais and placed his body, wrapped in a sheet, on the top. Then, after sunset, as the light turned navy, they covered him in salt and stepped back.

It was Bobby who lit the match and threw it on the pyre. He offered it to Dean, but he shook his head stiffly. I stood beside him as the fire grew higher and higher, sending hot ash and sparks into the stars. He seemed very far away with his fists balled at his sides and the fire reflected in his apple-green eyes. In the deep South Dakota dark they looked like a forest going up in flames. By the time the pyre had burned down to a pile of ash and soot, Dean’s eyes were charcoal-dark and just as cold. 

Bobby and Dean insisted that I sleep in the spare bedroom on the second floor while Dean took the couch. I couldn’t sleep for hours. The smell of smoke on my clothes and a lingering woman’s perfume in the room was worse than caffeine. I fell asleep counting the petals on the flowered wallpaper, thinking about the gun under the mattress back home and wishing I money for a pack of cigarettes. 

I woke up the next morning just after seven, the earliest I’d woken up in weeks. Dean and Bobby were already up, nursing cups of hot coffee and whispering over a large map on the dining room table. They stopped talking the instant I entered the room.

Loaded up with a Thermos of hot coffee and a couple dollars for gas, I shuffled back to my car. As I was about to climb in, Dean stuck out a hand for me to shake. I looked at him like he was an alien before I took it. I felt like I was turning inside out. I wished I could stay and I wished I’d left an hour ago.

I watched in my rearview mirror as Dean and Bobby watched me go. I honked my horn as I rolled out and waved to them from my window. Dean waved back, and I thought I saw him smile. Then I turned a corner in the road and he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the more i think about it, the more wild it is that you a) found this fic and b) read this far. im gonna be honest, ive never read a supernatural oc fanfic in my life and i probably never will. it must be fun to be in the elite 100 person club of people who have read this fic haha
> 
> anyway, the story's not over yet! these two dummies will come crashing back together, don't you worry. 
> 
> stay safe out there <3

**Author's Note:**

> i would feel irresponsible if i didnt tell you explicitly: if you are considering taking your own life for any reason, at any stage of planning, please tell a loved one or call your local suicide hotline. they are almost always free and 100% confidential. here's the number for the usa's hotline: 800-273-8255
> 
> stay safe out there and take it one hour at a time <3


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